1. Technical Field
This invention is directed to telephone terminals and more particularly, to a telephone terminal configurable by a user for accessing features available on a telephone terminal through an interactive display arrangement.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Current trends in the design of telephone terminals indicate that more and more of telephone functionality is being integrated into the telephone display. For example, information as to the features available on the display has migrated from LEDs to the display, and local additions such as directories, status inspection, incoming caller information etc., are all migrating to the display.
The technology presently in use in telephone displays is character-based liquid crystal device (LCD) displays. These displays are configured in various array sizes such as, for example, 2 line by 24 character LCD and 2 line by 40 character LCD. In order to be artfully incorporated into the telephone housing, these displays tend to be small, typically on the order of one inch in height. Also, in order to provide a reasonable number of characters for information such as caller information and directory access information, a small font size for the characters is generally used.
Many display arrangements available today permit accessing the features available on the display through softkeys. When interrogating a list of menu selections on a telephone terminal having such a display, for example, it is advantageous to be able to both advance and back up to menu screens in the directory. The screen prompts for commands which facilitate this movement, typically "Previous" and "Next", occupy space in the display and thereby limit the space available in the display for other softkey functions.
The use of both Previous and Next screen prompts are known and have previously been incorporated into display devices employing softkey functions. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,725,694, which issued to C. Auer et al. on Feb. 16, 1998, describes a computer interface device which provides these two prompts in softkeys. Although employing these prompts in a menu screen is reasonable wherein the screen has several available lines for textual prompts, such use diminishes the available display space on a small screen, having, for example, only two or three lines available for textual prompts.
One known display device having limited display space on a screen employs just one softkey prompt for moving among menu screen displays in the directory, thereby conserving space in the screen. This softkey function, typically labeled "MORE", provides the "next" softkey prompt for advancing to the next screen having the next set of menu selections. With this display arrangement, however, a user is unable to back up to a previously viewed screen. Rather the user must cycle completely through each menu screen while at a particular level before being able to arrive back at the screen he or she might then desire to access. It is desirable, therefore, that a user of a small display terminal be able to move easily among menu screens in an interactive display arrangement without diminishing the available display space on a small screen.